


Ranger

by stephanericher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:50:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8023354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: He’s kind of like a nineteenth-century cowboy, thumbs looped in his belt loops, except he doesn’t have a horse to ride on or a ten-gallon hat or anything to herd.





	Ranger

**Author's Note:**

> it's probably worth saying that i'm deeply attached to the idea of the garrison being in phoenix

They find shady spots on the roof to meet up, barring the door behind them because here they can’t be disturbed by Keith’s roommate or anyone looking for Shiro in his room or the library or anywhere else. Shiro doesn’t mind company that much, but Keith does, a lot of the time—and even if he never did Shiro would still want Keith to himself a little more. He wants room to enjoy the way Keith shields his eyes with one hand, squinting at the sun as it sinks behind the mountains and leaning against the wall, half-slumped in a way that would make any instructor send him right back to the first class when they’d learned to sit straight and look sharp all the time, contribute to order, things that Keith hates because he says there’s no real reason other than to give the officers a false sense of control (and Shiro’s thought that in private, but never long or hard enough to build up an active resentment the way Keith does). Keith can assume that position; he just doesn’t when he doesn’t have to, even long after most of his classmates are unconsciously doing it in the cafeteria and at their desks in their dorm rooms. (How someone with such an obvious mistrust of authority ended up at the academy is still a mystery to Shiro, not that he’s not so fervently glad Keith’s here.)

Some nights they stay until the sun is long since gone behind the mountains and the atmosphere is streaked with luminescent colors like looking at an abstract expressionist painting on acid, and Shiro starts to look for the stars and planets as they appear. Keith is more concerned with the colors, the effects trailing through the stratosphere, close enough to see almost instantaneously.

“Do you ever wonder,” Keith says, “why it all looks like this?”

That’s covered in a class Keith won’t take for another year and a half, but it’s something it seems like he should already know.

“I’ve heard it’s chemtrails,” says Keith.

“Keith—”

“Kidding.”

He tosses Shiro a grin, and Shiro’s not even sure if he can laugh. Keith had said it with a straight face and he had bought it so easily, when even Keith doesn’t believe in something that ridiculous, and even Keith knows how to make fun of himself a bit, rolling off some of the intense seriousness that clings to him like the desert dust. He bumps Shiro’s shoulder, and Shiro leans into the gesture. And instead of swaying back, leaning against the wall again, Keith stays pressed against him—not pushing, but definitely there. He stares across the horizon, no longer at the clouds but at something, something in the desert Shiro can’t see, something in the desert Shiro doesn’t even know how to look for. And if he were to ask, he’s not quite sure Keith would even know where to start telling him.

Keith’s lived in this stretch of desert his whole life; his skin is perpetually dry to the touch and he’s used to growing his hair long because it’s not humid enough to stick to his neck, not if he rises at night and keeps out of the blazing sun, stalks a path like a coyote slinking through the shadows. He knows every grain of dust that sticks to his standard-issue boots; he can rattle off stuff about every plant they step on (not the Latin name or the genealogy, its status as invasive or endangered, but how it tastes if it’s edible and where you should touch it if you can even get away with touching it at all, the kinds of places it tends to crop up—just beyond the tip of a saguaro’s shadow, under the clumps of moisture tracked by human footsteps, at the edge of dried-up creek beds lying dormant until a quick smattering of rain); he can sense the weather when he tastes the air. He’s kind of like a nineteenth-century cowboy, thumbs looped in his belt loops, except he doesn’t have a horse to ride on or a ten-gallon hat or anything to herd, but when Shiro says that Keith just gives him a funny look and quickens his pace. (He knows it’s not an insult, but he’s still not sure he likes it, because this is one thing he can afford being picky about—there’s not much of that out here, what you eat and what you drink and if you drink.)

And when they go out in the desert on a weekend when they really should be studying (but the weather’s too nice and eventually Keith gives in), Shiro’s reminded every time of how much Keith loves this place, how he will never admit it but instead of choking on the dust, feeling stifled by one more thing holding him back, he embraces it, lets himself be covered, immersed in the crumbling rocks and the trenches left by what was once a river. Maybe it’s because desert life is so hard, so unbearable when you’re not in the air conditioning and when you can’t pretend you could take a thirty-minute shower if you really wanted to and when you’re not surrounded by steel walls and the flight simulator’s believable facsimile of deep space. The dry heat is dangerous, relentless, the kind of challenge that you never really beat, the kind of challenge that makes Keith come alive, lights a fire behind his dark irises, the same fire he gets when they sneak out late at night in the simulator, just the two of them on a three-person mission, managing just fine.

And before he knew Keith, Shiro had never given the desert very much thought—good for stargazing out in the quiet middle of nowhere with just a telescope, good for walking if you really needed to be alone, but nothing inherent and specific to this place, nothing in the colors or the textures or the life (the life he had thought was far less than plentiful out here) that made it special. To him it had been just another stopping place on his way to the edge of the solar system, but now—now it’s different. He can’t see it quite the way Keith does (or see nearly as much as he can), but in some flashes, the twitch of a rabbit disappearing into the underbrush, the smell of a distant campfire carrying through the wind, the way the dirt bunches up around their heels when they stand too long, it makes itself clear to him, clicks like the docking simulator at just the right angle and velocity.

“I want to see all of it,” Keith says, clasping Shiro’s fingers a little tighter in his. “Someday.”

“How are you going to manage that and space?” says Shiro.

“You have to spend half your time planetside,” says Keith. “And I’ll buy a bike or a car or something. Both.”

That’s pretty ambitious, but if anyone can do it, if anyone’s going to do it, it’s going to be Keith. And as restless as he is, how can he do anything else? (Maybe he won’t always be this way; they’re still kids and their future is still not quite set—but Keith’s stubborn and obstinate, and that much is never going to change, and when he sets out to do something like this he’s going to do it if it takes a lifetime, because somehow when Shiro thinks he’s exhausted his intensity it comes burning back like a neutron star, reborn all over again.)

“Can I come with you?” Shiro says.

Keith looks up at him, eyes wide. They never talk about the future, except when Shiro says with certainty that they’ll both be astronauts, both on the same missions on the frontier, because he knows they will and it’s only a matter of time. And perhaps it’s just hopeful, youthful dreaming, banking on the two of them like this, but it’s the kind of bet Shiro’s comfortable placing.

“Course you can,” Keith says, eventually; then he looks away.

Shiro squeezes his hand. “Thanks.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yeah, you have.”

Shiro reaches up with his free hand, thumbs Keith’s bottom lip so he looks up again. And this time Keith waits for him to close the gap most of the way before he tilts his head the rest of the way and kisses Shiro.


End file.
